The present disclosure relates to session management of video delivery systems. Network transmission of video or other content services, such as cable television, video-on-demand (VOD), switched digital video (SDV), and video file downloads, continues to proliferate as the network infrastructure continues to evolve to support the high demands of such services.
Many network infrastructures include headends for providing video services, applications for delivering the video services, and video servers that serve the content to set-top boxes or other user devices (typically installed in a person's home) for rendering the service (e.g. a pay-per-view movie) to users. Such networks typically arrange set-top boxes into service groups, which are collections of set-top boxes served by a common set of connections emanating from the headend and terminating at the service groups. Typically, each set-top box is disposed in geographic proximity to others in the group, and the connections defined by physical coaxial cable (coax) runs that branch out to the various service groups. Set-top boxes evolved to individually addressable network devices, thereby enabling video-on-demand, switched digital video, and other selective viewing techniques that provide a greater granularity of control to client devices.
Other network infrastructures include Internet Protocol (IP) based video delivery of digital content. With IP based video delivery, a provider typically operates through multiple servers for providing video delivery service. In accordance with such technology, a client may request IP-based video from a streaming server to view video on a client device such as a television, computer, mobile device, or other device suitable for watching or storing IP-based video content. Typically, the streaming server services a request by streaming the requested content to the client through, for example, a cable modem, an Internet connection, etc., in a customer's home network.
Video delivery systems typically use communication sessions between a client and server (and/or session manager) to manage selective content delivery of content, such as video-on-demand content. A given session is usually initiated upon receiving a request from a client device for specific content. Session management often includes authentication, authorization, expanding content into a playlist, and reserving network/system resources for the duration of a given session. A typical conventional session manager application is a single monolithic application that implements these VOD features and manages delivery of the content such as video data from a video server to a set-top box. The conventional VOD session manager application is installed at the separate individual headends